Substantial progress in the development of fluorescent lamps has been achieved in recent years. Reduction of the diameter of the glass tubing used to form the fluorescent lighting element or tube, for example to 16 mm, and the use of new fluorescent materials has made it possible to increase light output substantially. When compared with previous fluorescent tubes with 40 or 27 mm diameter, these new, reduced-diameter tubes exhibit an increase in light output of up to 50%, as much as 104 lumens per watt has been mentioned in the trade literature.
Light quality could also be significantly improved not only by employing new fluorescent material mixtures, but also by using higher frequencies for the current passing through the fluorescent tubes, thus avoiding the stroboscope effect resulting from the use of low frequency xe2x80x9cmainsxe2x80x9d power.
However, high-performance fluorescent lamps require an electronic ballast and cannot be used as replacements without difficulty in conventional fluorescent lighting assemblies which use an inductive ballast.
As a consequence, hundreds of millions of existing fluorescent lighting assemblies are obsolete and require an urgent remedy. The desire for replacement is universal, but the high cost connected with disassembly of old lamps and installation of new ones are a disincentive.
The task of the invention is to provide cost-effective fluorescent lighting assemblies that are geared both in dimensions and design toward the present demands. Because cost is a factor, the apparatus of the present invention uses a minimal amount of components, packaged in a rational manner to ensure rapid and simple installation. A preferred embodiment of the present invention configures a portion of the lamp assembly as a semilamp, enabling the retrofitting of existing lamp assemblies that do not operate electonically.
This task is solved by a new reflector lamp element in which the reflector element is designed as a self-supporting, extruded or drawn hollow section, which is at least partially closed on the ends by two plates, each end plate provided with at least one socket for mounting and delivering power to a fluorescent bulb, and in which the electronic components of the ballast are situated within the hollow section. In instances where more light is required, the end plates can be fitted with additional sockets in order to mount multiple fluorescent tubes within the lighting assembly.
This type of arrangement permits not only an extremely flat design, but also a stable and protected accommodation of the sensitive electronic compounds. Assembly of the end plates with a hollow section is facilitated by guide surfaces that extend into the hollow section, in which the guide surfaces snap into corresponding recesses of the hollow section with at least partially elastic snaps.
The extruded hollow sections can also be equipped with guide strips to secure a circuit board to the electronic ballast, at minimal additional cost. The arrangement of spring contacts on the circuit board that lead directly to the sockets of the fluorescent lamps is possible and is a feature of a preferred embodiment.
A particularly advantageous variant of the reflector lamp assembly according to the invention consists of designing it as a semilamp, which means configuring it so that it is provided on both end surfaces with pin bases and is insertable into an existing lamp apparatus that is still not operated electronically in order to retrofit it to advantageous, energy-saving high-frequency operation.
It is further recommended in order to facilitate insertion of such a semilamp into existing lamps that the pin bases arranged on the end surfaces be mounted to rotate by about 90xc2x0. This expedient avoids the otherwise cumbersome insertion into the sockets by pivoting the entire semilamp. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, only the rotatable pin base need be rotated.